Be DIY and save a few bucks. Here we go.
Recipe #1, Soft Scrubber-
This is easy. Pour 1/2 cup of baking soda into a bowl or bucket, add enough liquid detergent to make a texture like frosting (not too hard). Scoop the mixture onto a wet sponge, and wash the dirty surface that you made it for. This is the perfect washing the bathtub and sinks because it rinses easily and doesn’t leave grit, which always reminds me of the paste they put in your mouth at the dentist’s when they’re cleaning. Ick.
Do note: Add 1 teaspoon of vegetable glycerin to the mix and store in a sealed glass jar to keep the concoction moist.
Recipe #2, Window Cleaner-
Gather up 1/4-1/2 teaspoon liquid detergent, 3 tablespoons vinegar, 2 cups water, and dump it all into a spray bottle. Shake it up like no one’s business, and use as you would a commercial brand. The soap in this recipe is key; it removes the wax and shit from commercial cheap-o brands that you used in the past (yes, Windex qualifies as cheap-o).
Recipe #3, Oven Cleaner-
Sprinkle water over the bottom of the oven, enough that is covered, but not so much that you’ve got a half inch flood going on. Cover the grime with enough baking soda that the surface is totally albino white. Sprinkle some more water over the top. Let that shit set overnight. You can easily wipe up the grease the next morning because the grime will loosen up. When you have cleaned up the grossest shit, dab a bit of liquid detergent or soap on a sponge, and wash the remaining gunk from the oven. If this recipe doesn’t work for you it is probably because you didn’t use enough baking soda and/or water, so try that shit again.
Recipe #4, All-Purpose Spray Cleaner-
Combine 1/2 teaspoon washing soda, a dab of liquid soap, and 2 cups hot tap water and shake in a spray bottle until the washing soda has dissolved. Spray and wipe; simple enough.
Recipe #5, Furniture Polish-
Mix 1/2 teaspoon oil, such as olive (or jojoba, a liquid wax), 1/4 cup vinegar or fresh lemon juice in a glass jar. Dip a soft rag into the solution and wipe onto wood surfaces. Cover the glass jar and store indefinitely (this shit lasts like, forever; it’s great).
Also
Vinegar Deodorizer-
Keep a spray bottle filled with at minimum 5 percent vinegar in your kitchen and bathroom for cleaning. Spray the vinegar on your cutting board before going to bed at night, and don’t even rinse, let it burn those bacteria overnight. The smell of vinegar dissipates quickly (like, within a few hours). If you don’t want to let it sit around, just spray and wipe off.
And that’s it; this kit is cheap (or at least cheaper than brands at the store) and is better for you and the environment. Just one more way to save money and make money through a DIY project that has been created at Save and Make Money.
By: Andy Cerrone
Archive for February, 2010
Get Smart-Boost for Your Brain, Habit and Memory Power
February 20th, 2010
You can compare repetitious habits with the groves on a phonograph record that have recorded your habits with the needle of your subconscious mind playing them over and over. You can change your bad habits or get rid of them because they are your own thoughts being repeated by you. You brought them into existence and you can destroy them and smash them to smithereens with your willpower.
In our fast paced society, the “I want it now or my money back” attitude has obsessed the consumer. Humanity nowadays reads no more than ten pages of a book mostly because they do not want to go through the necessary steps required to improve. That is plain laziness in our high speed society.
Habits shape your future success. When you make a habit you are burning a groove like on a recordable CD in the computer of your subconscious mind. Your conscious mind believes a repetitive thought is a habit that it cannot remove or get away from. If you keep repeating the same action over and over it gives power to that new habit and it will burn a habit groove in your subconscious mind. The computer of the mind will play those CD’S of habits time after time just like if you are pressing the repeat button on a CD player. And your own body acts in response to those habits with obsession and compulsion without your permission. “Habit enemies” can force you against your will to act against your right behavior.
Habits can be formed like dough in a mold. When the dough is wet and soft it is pliable like your mind. When the dough is heated in the mold, it is set and becomes solid so as with your habits being firmly set with the repetitions of your thoughts. Refuse to feed bad habits by starving them the nourishment of additional wrong actions and with the help of visualization and repeating new good habits over and over, it will add fuel to your willpower, hence your success is assured in the amount of your new found strength.
Remember environment is stronger than willpower but your will power ought to be stronger to succeed in any endeavor. If you think you lack willpower, the way to develop it is by determination. “I won’t do this” or “I will do this.” Focus your will power on these simple but powerful thoughts daily. Now, I will explain to you the degrees and how willpower works and why it is so important to know how to use it properly to develop good habits. The principle of polarity explains that the difference between things seemingly diametrically opposed to each other is merely a matter of degrees of vibration; a matter of degrees of mental manifestation; two opposite poles of one thing. Let’s take willpower as an example. Concentrate your attention upon the vibration of your will power. Is it your willpower always weak or is it strong? A weak willpower is a robotic willpower. A strong willpower is a dynamic willpower. We are born with physiological willpower, which is automatic.
This automatic willpower is attached to all five senses and it can become semi-paralyzed by wrong behaviors, wrong decisions, and wrong activities. Automatic will power is the lesser degree of vibration; the lesser degree of thinking; the opposite pole of dynamic will power. But when your thinking is guided by discrimination; it revolves around a definite purpose and your purpose is worthwhile. When your actions bring about good, your will is guided by wisdom. Dynamic will power is the highest degree of vibration; the highest degree of thinking; the opposite pole of automatic will power.
Bad habits are like chunks of glass that look like precious stones, but will give disillusionment and dissatisfaction. Achievement is quickened or prolonged by your habits. I am talking about your daily mental habits that have sphere of influence over your daily life. These habits are like glue that attaches everything to it in your person, bad or good. Good habits attract advantages and bad habits attract disadvantages. When you arrive at work, for example, instead of getting down to business you say to yourself, “I need a cup of coffee before I get started and I also have a really important phone call I should make.” Habits like these are nothing but distractions. You are just wasting time that could have been well spent and you are robbing yourself from making significant sales which results in a smaller pay check and commission. It is better to get into the habit of having your coffee before work or at lunch time, and make your phone calls at lunch time. Refuse a bad habit by rejecting everything that arouses it. One bad habit I see happen continuously is leaving work early to go home when business is slow, but it could get busy the moment you leave! If this practice becomes a bad habit, just think how many sales you could lose by doing this over and over.
Keep striving until your hard work is met with success. You can be successful or not. It all depends on the quality and intensity of your thoughts and the degree of your will power. If you apply positive thinking together with dynamic will power, you will succeed. Let’s say that you do your visualizing in the morning and as soon as you finish you say to yourself, “I have probably just wasted my time seeing myself making all this money and I am pretty sure this technique is useless.” Or, “I just do not have the patience to do all of this; ‘patience is a virtue of the dead.’”
Negative thinking is the same as worrying. When you worry you are slowly killing yourself and it’s your funeral all arranged by yourself. Why die and suffer daily from worry? What ever you are experiencing in life, sorrow, ill health, poverty, someone else on this planet is suffering a thousand times more than you. Just give your worries to God and do not think yourself so ill-fated that you destroy yourself and block out the great light of God that is always trying to help you! Which shall it be victory or defeat? Therefore, if you adhere to a positive thought it will become real in form.
Good habits are the treasure troves that will bring permanent happiness. Habits are essential but we abuse their power. If you teach a parrot to talk and sing, it will duplicate what it hears over and over. If you teach it to use bad language, it will repeat profanities again and again upsetting you and others. Weak minded people can descend into bad habits effortlessly, accordingly tough- minded people can be taught to make good habits at will.
Habits can be made at will by concentration. Repetitive good habits together with positive daily affirmations can actually help you achieve wealth. The technique for destroying habits is by concentrating on the brain cells during meditation or when you are in silence. Concentrate at the third eye or the point between the eyebrows and intensely affirm that all the grooves of bad habits are being erased and destroyed. You should also be more cautious of the kind of company you keep and who you are living with. When you become more advanced spiritually you will notice you are more sensitive, sharp and energetic.
By: Gary Zalben
Help, My Spouse Is Into Kinky Sex!
February 20th, 2010
Below is one of the questions people ask me often. The situation is one that is not uncommon when it comes to erotic power exchange: one of the partners wants it, the other doesn’t. Hopefully this question and answer will help others.
The Question
“I am looking for information that might cover the troubles that crop up in a relationship, particularly in a marriage, when one partner reveals his/her tendencies towards BDSM. I am the vanilla spouse of a man who believes he is dominant. We have been married eight years, and until about two years ago, I had no clue he had such interests. We have done some experimentation since he “came out,” but I do not find any of it appealing at all. It’s possible that the circumstances of some of our encounters turned me off to it all, but trust me, the turn off is permanent.
I have read a ton of information on this issue, have read stories, have talked to both dom(me)s and subs, have talked with my husband, etc. I’m one of those poor dull saps who just doesn’t get it.
My husband and I have reached a point in our marriage where he has decided that he needs to shelve his BD notions. About a week ago, the issue was whether I was the stronger pull or BD was the stronger pull. When I began talking about taking some time off from the marriage to give him a chance to sort out his feelings (it’s tough being married for eight years and realizing that you might not be picked), he said, adamantly, that he would put aside his feelings for BDSM and focus on the marriage.
It seems that our options are: he shelves his desires; I try to figure out a way to play with him (not going to happen); we negotiate a way for him to seek another “play” partner (this makes me whoozy because I understand the emotional involvement necessary and don’t think I can cope); we split up and he pursues his needs without the baggage of a vanilla spouse (not a terribly happy solution considering I love this little guy).
My question is, how likely is it that these feelings will surface in the future and cause him more conflict? We have discussed the possibility of his finding a sub and having a “no sex” relationship with her. But a number of things are a problem with that possibility. No. 1, I believe that erotic power exchange, whether it involves intercourse or not, is a form of sex (in other words, I am terminally monogamous). I’m sorry if I’m repeating myself. No. 2, he doesn’t want to “soil” the marriage with his needs (would rather divorce than soil it, I suspect). No. 3, he can’t find a partner.
Anyway, if you know of any resources, people, articles, books, organizations, angels, fairy godmothers, ANYONE or ANYTHING that might help me come up with some answers on this, I would be so grateful that I would — well, I don’t know what. I’m at a point where I’m struggling issues of trust, betrayal (of self and spouse), fear, etc. I looked through your listing of books and articles and didn’t see anything that looked even remotely helpful.
I apologize for the intimate and personal tone of this e-mail, but I am rather desperate. We are about to seek counseling (ug! but it’s necessary), but something tells me that I will find no answers there, that the focus will be on why he is the way he is. I AM grateful to have found your website. The listing of stages is MOST enlightening.”
My answer
Thank you for bringing up the question, because it is one many people have problems with. Let us start with saying that erotic power exchange emotions are not likely to disappear. Although science still has not determined exactly what determines our sexual preferences, it is becoming apparant that at least a substantial part of it is genetically encoded. Your husband is obviously facing a huge personal problem (and as a result so are you) that is not an easy nut to crack. Even though he may probably try to shelf his emotions for now, they are very likely to pop up again in the future and it is not unlikely they will become stronger, since he may try to shelf his emotions; the basic feelings and the fantasies will still be there. That brings a lot of strain in your relationship, no doubt.
There is very little or no literature on this. It boils down to incompatibality of partners (which is not uncommon – with or without erotic power exchange).
Having said this, the situation is probably not completely hopeless. We’ll get to that in a minute. First however another warning. You are very right in saying that erotic power exchange (even without “the act”) is a form of sexuality, hence there is indeed no erotic power exchange without sex. Having a play partner outside the relationship is a form many find to cope with problems like these. Does that work? Usually not. There are a couple of risks involved in such a set up:
* the erotic power exchange will bring out feelings and emotions between the two playing. Emotions that weren’t there before – at least not in a “live” situation. The play partners are very likely to bond, the non-playing spouse will feel left out and the other will be torn between two different people he (as in this case) shares his emotions with;
* “play without sex” is what many people will suggest to start with. You can take our word for it that some sort of “active sex” will evolve soon, since the tension built up in active play requires a release AND builds up sexual needs;
* since erotic power exchange to most people are very dear, personal and treasured emotions, sharing them with someone will automatically lead to a special bond that will grow and things that should not be in there will also slip in, even if the play partners sincerely do not want that to happen.
Hence, unless you find a commercial play partner (prostitute, which in this case is very unlikely because there are very little sub-prostitutes) you pay for playing but do do build up any “relationship” with, the risks of such a solution are huge. And you are right, you would have to agreee to all this too and cope with it.
Now, to the question, is this hopeless? Probably not. Without even knowing about exactly what has happened between the two of you so far it is likely things have started on the wrong foot and your husband is asking too much. Even without the specific dominant/submissive dynamics there are very little women that will not be attracted to “exciting” eroticism and sexuality (even though you may have to accept yourself and your desires first). Mind you, we are not going to throw the “you are submissive but you don’t know that yet” routine on you, because that is nonsense.
However, do try and envisage the following situation: you are blindfolded (with something soft like silk) and all he does is carress you, arouse you, kiss you all over, maybe tickle you a bit and undertakes every effort to seduce you. No whips, no ropes and cuffs, no heavy leather stuff, just a blindfold, maybe a glass of wine, candle light, soft music, comfort, enjoyment and MOST IMPORTANTLY, no stress. Just pure and simple enjoyment. Chances are you’d like that very much and this IS an erotic power exchange setting where you leave it to him to work his butt off to seduce you, while he will be the one that has the initiative and these are exactly the dynamics that we are really talking about.
Something like the above – and please take out the strain and the stress, forget about being called slave, calling him master or anything, forget about the fact that this is erotic power exchange, just enjoy – might be pure and simple joy and fun. There are a lot of other simple ways to bring out the same eroticism. For example, allow him to “order” you to cook a wonderful candlelight dinner for the two of you. That will probably make a nice entree to pure enjoyment too.
The examples above are simple and very erotic and intimate forms of role play without all the heavy stuff and they – or other ways – may bring about a wonderful way to experience what you yourself like and what not. Letting him pick your clothes for a change, you doing simple things to please him and he being receptive to that and responding to it, all of that is erotic power exchange and that may appeal to him as well as to you without the heavy stuff. The idea is to learn and play and BOTH try and experiment with FUN things, without the stress, the need, etcetera.
Will this go further? Who is to say. That totally depends on the two of you. But do try. It isn’t as scary as it seems as you can see (or at least it doesn’t have to be). It offers both of you a possibility to explore, for him to learn and understand that the trick (in any erotic power exchange setting) is subtlety and NOT the heavy stuff (most of what you see is pornography and has little to do with the things people do in their homes).
By all means do talk about this, communicate and exchange what both of you can and can not do. That goes for you too and should be respected.
By: Hans Meijer
